New poll helps both O’Rourke and Cruz

1of22FILE -- Rep. Beto OÕRourke (D-Texas), who is taking on incumbent Republican Sen.Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in his upcoming Senate re-election run, arrives at a campaign event in Lufkin, Texas, Feb. 9, 2018. In the first three months of 2018, OÕRourke has raised $6.7 million, more than any of his Democratic counterparts seeking Senate seats around the country in that time period, giving Texas Democrats a burst of hope. (Tamir Kalifa/The New York Times)Photo: TAMIR KALIFA, STR / NYT

2of22STAFFORD, TX - APRIL 2: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) shakes hands with supporters during a rally to launch his re-election campaign at the Redneck Country Club on April 2, 2018 in Stafford, Texas. Cruz is defending his bid for a second term as Texas' junior senator against Democratic U.S. Rep. Beto O'Rourke. (Photo by Erich Schlegel/Getty Images)Photo: Erich Schlegel, Stringer / Getty Images

3of22Campaign buttons, right, and posters for Beto O'Rourke, Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives, sit on a table during a town hall meeting in Brady, Texas, U.S. on Friday, April 6, 2018. O'Rourke is currently a congressman but is running for senate against Ted Cruz. Sergio Flores/BloombergPhoto: Sergio Flores / Bloomberg

4of22Beto O'Rourke, Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives, center, and attendees leave following a town hall meeting in San Saba, Texas, U.S. on Friday, April 6, 2018. O'Rourke is currently a congressman but is running for senate against Ted Cruz. Sergio Flores/BloombergPhoto: Sergio Flores / Bloomberg

5of22STAFFORD, TX - APRIL 2: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) walks out with his wife Heidi and children to launch his re-election campaign at the Redneck Country Club on April 2, 2018 in Stafford, Texas. Cruz is defending his bid for a second term as Texas' junior senator against Democratic U.S. Rep. Beto O'Rourke. (Photo by Erich Schlegel/Getty Images)Photo: Erich Schlegel, Stringer / Getty Images

6of22Beto O'Rourke, Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives, listens to an attendee during a town hall meeting in San Saba, Texas, U.S. on Friday, April 6, 2018. O'Rourke is currently a congressman but is running for senate against Ted Cruz. Sergio Flores/BloombergPhoto: Sergio Flores / Bloomberg

7of22Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, questions Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg as he testifies before a joint hearing of the Commerce and Judiciary Committees on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, April 10, 2018, about the use of Facebook data to target American voters in the 2016 election. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)Photo: Andrew Harnik, STF / Associated Press

8of22Attendees listen during a town hall meeting with Beto O'Rourke, Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives, not pictured, in San Saba, Texas, U.S. on Friday, April 6, 2018. O'Rourke is currently a congressman but is running for senate against Ted Cruz. Sergio Flores/BloombergPhoto: Sergio Flores / Bloomberg

9of22Michael Berry speaks before U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz officially kicks off his campaign for the U.S. Senate pitching the slogan Texas Tough at the Redneck Country Club in Stafford, TX on Monday, April 2, 2018.Photo: Tim Warner, Freelance / For The Chronicle

10of22An attendee wears a campaign button featuring the image of Beto O'Rourke, Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives, during a town hall meeting in San Saba, Texas, U.S. on Friday, April 6, 2018. O'Rourke is currently a congressman but is running for senate against Ted Cruz. Sergio Flores/BloombergPhoto: Sergio Flores / Bloomberg

11of22U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz officially kicks off his campaign for the U.S. Senate pitching the slogan Texas Tough at the Redneck Country Club in Stafford, TX on Monday, April 2, 2018.Photo: Tim Warner, Freelance / For The Chronicle

12of22Beto O'Rourke, Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives, center, speaks during a town hall meeting in San Saba, Texas, U.S. on Friday, April 6, 2018. O'Rourke is currently a congressman but is running for senate against Ted Cruz. Sergio Flores/BloombergPhoto: Sergio Flores / Bloomberg

13of22Beto O'Rourke, Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives, speaks during a town hall meeting in San Saba, Texas, U.S. on Friday, April 6, 2018. O'Rourke is currently a congressman but is running for senate against Ted Cruz. Sergio Flores/BloombergPhoto: Sergio Flores / Bloomberg

15of22Beto O'Rourke, US Representative from El Paso, stopped in Midland on his campaign for US Senate, April 7, 2018, at the MLK Center. James Durbin/Reporter-TelegramPhoto: James Durbin / James Durbin

16of22Beto O'Rourke, US Representative from El Paso, signs a copy of Texas Monthly featuring his photo on the cover during a stop in Midland on his campaign for US Senate, April 7, 2018, at the MLK Center. James Durbin/Reporter-TelegramPhoto: James Durbin / James Durbin

17of22Beto O'Rourke, a Texas Democrat running for Senate, speaks at a town hall meeting in Brady, Texas, April 6, 2018. O'Rourke is a political fable, holding out the happy if far-fetched possibility that a candidates effervescence matters more than a states partisan breakdown and that gumption beats any focus group, writes columnist Frank Bruni. (Bryan Schutmaat/The New York Times)Photo: BRYAN SCHUTMAAT, STR / NYT

18of22Beto O'Rourke, a Texas Democrat running for Senate, speaks at a town hall meeting at University of Houston, April 5, 2018. O'Rourke is a political fable, holding out the happy if far-fetched possibility that a candidates effervescence matters more than a states partisan breakdown and that gumption beats any focus group, writes columnist Frank Bruni. (Bryan Schutmaat/The New York Times)Photo: BRYAN SCHUTMAAT, STR / NYT

19of22Beto O'Rourke walks his daughter Molly through the crowd as he plays baseball with his old team Los Diablitos at a fundraiser for his campaign for U.S. Senate on April 14, 2018.Photo: Tom Reel, Staff / San Antonio Express-News

20of22Kids get baseballs autographed by the candidate as Beto O'Rourke plays baseball with his old team Los Diablitos at a fundraiser for his campaign for U.S. Senate on April 14, 2018. Two brothers, Roman (center) and Jude Pelagrin, take advantage of the opportunity.Photo: Tom Reel, Staff / San Antonio Express-News

21of22Beto O'Rourke onstage with his wife Amy and daughter Molly, makes a speech during the game as he plays baseball with his old team Los Diablitos at a fundraiser for his campaign for U.S. Senate on April 14, 2018.Photo: Tom Reel, Staff / San Antonio Express-News

22of22Julian Castro and Beto O'Rourke greet as Democratic statewide hopefuls gather at the Sheraton Austin at the Capitol to speak at the Blue Wave Summit Fundraising reception on April 14, 2018.Photo: Tom Reel, Staff / San Antonio Express-News

Ted Cruz and Beto O’Rourke both want the same thing.

No, Cruz doesn’t line up with O’Rourke on the need for universal health care, cost-free higher education and criminal justice reform.

And they certainly don’t wish for the same outcome in their U.S. Senate race, which finds Cruz, the Republican incumbent, staring down a challenge from O’Rourke, a Democratic congressman from El Paso.

But both men want O’Rourke to be perceived as a serious threat.

After all, the big enemy for Cruz in this campaign is complacency, the sense among his fellow Republicans that his re-election will be as automatic as every other post-1994 statewide race for the GOP. The big enemy for O’Rourke is hopelessness, the chronic affliction that infects Texas Democrats as soon as the leaves start falling from the trees in even-numbered years.

That’s why the Wednesday release of a Quinnipiac University poll showing O’Rourke only three points behind Cruz (47-44) served both candidates’ interests. Cruz wants his supporters to be jarred out of complacency; to run scared. O’Rourke wants to be taken seriously, to persuade reticent voters that his candidacy is worth their emotional (and financial) investment.

One side is fighting overconfidence, the other is trying to muster up more confidence.

Those potential Beto backers have, to quote an old Bob Dylan song, “been burned before and they know the score.” They saw Tony Sanchez hyped as the Great Latino Hope in 2002 and Wendy Davis promoted as someone who could electrify women voters in 2014. Sanchez lost his gubernatorial bid by 18 percent, Davis lost hers by 20.

After we get past the standard-issue caveats about the Quinnipiac poll — e.g., it’s only one poll; we’re still six-and-a-half months away from election day; the poll sampled registered, not likely voters — there’s plenty of good news here for O’Rourke.

The most promising nugget, paradoxically enough, involves the extent to which O’Rourke is still an unknown quantity.

While 90 percent of poll respondents said they know enough about Cruz to have an opinion about him, more than half (53 percent) said they hadn’t heard enough about O’Rourke to know what to make of him.

That’s a huge name-recognition gap in Cruz’s favor. On the one hand, you could look at these numbers and conclude that all of O’Rourke’s celebrated road-tripping across red and blue counties in this state hasn’t yet made him a known quantity. And that’s a worrisome sign for his team.

On the other hand, this poll tells us O’Rourke is essentially in a dead heat with an incumbent and, unlike that incumbent, has big potential for growth. Most Texas voters have made up their minds about Cruz and they’re pretty divided about him, according to the poll, with a 46-44 favorable/unfavorable ratio. By contrast, nearly two-thirds of voters who are familiar with O’Rourke like him.

Also, while Cruz registered an 86-percent favorable rating among Republicans, there’s been a palpable softening in the enthusiasm for him in this state since he launched his failed 2016 campaign for president.

Texas Republicans who previously saw Cruz as an uncompromising conservative rebel have seen him go from trashing Donald Trump (in 2016) as a “pathological liar,” “utterly amoral,” “a serial philanderer” and “a narcissist at a level I don’t think this country’s ever seen,” to gushing about him (in the latest issue of Time magazine) as “a flash-bang grenade thrown into Washington by the forgotten men and women of America.”

Either he was faking his moral outrage then, or he’s faking his obsequiousness now. Either way, his credibility took a hit.

In the Quinnipiac poll, O’Rourke has a 16-point edge among voters between the ages of 18 and 34. For all of his painstaking efforts to flip GOP voters in small, rural counties, O’Rourke’s prospects will hinge on his ability to get young Democratic leaners to shed their cynicism about the voting process.

At times, Cruz has enjoyed mocking the idea of a 2018 Democratic wave, taking particular delight in O’Rourke’s subpar primary performance (less than 62 percent of the vote against two obscure opponents) last month. All the same, he wants his fellow Republicans to be worried.

“The left is going to show up,” he said at the GOP’s Lincoln Reagan dinner in February. “They will crawl over broken glass in November to vote.”

Gilbert Garcia is a native of Brownsville, Texas, with more than 20 years experience writing for weekly and daily newspapers. A graduate of Harvard University, he has won awards for his reporting on music, sports, religion, and politics. He is the author of the 2012 book, "Reagan's Comeback: Four Weeks in Texas That Changed American Politics Forever," published by Trinity University Press. One of his feature stories also appeared in the national anthology, "Da Capo Best Music Writing 2001."